I don't own Glee, I just love it a lot!
A/N: I'm just trying to get inside Quinn's head here, I do not actually believe anything I've written in the first paragraph, lol!
Everything she's ever been told about sex is true. Only bad girls have sex before marriage. Doing it, even once, will ruin your whole life. She's watched her friends, having sex with no consequences, heard the bragging from both girls and guys, and she's just waiting for the day it will come back to get them. Like it did her. Or maybe she just got punished because she's like, an adulteress or something. She doesn't understand it. She just knows that she had sex and she got pregnant. She lost her boyfriend. She lost her reputation. She lost her spot on the Cheerios. She has no home, no parents. It's not fair.
Of course she's giving the baby up. There's no question. She can't take care of it. She can't even take care of herself. Besides, it deserves someone better as a parent. Someone who isn't such a screw up. Someone who isn't her. Someone who definitely isn't Puck. She was an idiot and she spends everyday paying for that mistake. She watches her boyfriend making a fool of himself over another girl. She watches her old friends whisper and giggle over secrets she's not part of. She watches the Cheerios win Nationals without her.
When she sees her mom backstage at Regionals, she doesn't even know how to process what's going on. She elated from the performance, shocked to see her mom, ashamed that somehow her bad decision has caused her whole family to fall apart, and terrified, because she's pretty sure her water just broke. The whole thing is a haze. She remembers bits and pieces. The baby's bright blue eyes, Puck saying he loves her, her mom's arms holding her after she signed the adoption papers. She can't focus on any of it or she'll fall to a million pieces. She goes right back to school. If she doesn't think about any of it, then it never happened, right? But there's only a few more classes and then she has a whole empty summer ahead of her.
People talk about Rachel Berry's drive and ambition, but Quinn Fabray has ALWAYS gotten her way. She spends her summer making plans. She will be head cheerleader again. She will regain her place at the top of the school. And she doesn't need a quarterback boyfriend to do it. She's going to do it on her own. She's done letting other people in. She pictures her mind as a storage room. She needs to clean house. She can't have any distractions. She imagines taking every painful memory of the last year and shoving them into a big box. She tapes it shut and pushes it as far out of sight as she can. She's moving on from all of it.
She does this in real life too. When she came out of the hospital, she went home with her mom. It was such a shock to be back in her room. All of her things just like she had left them. She goes through and takes down all the things that hurt to much to think about right now, photos of her and Finn, pictures of her and her Daddy, she throws away the charity ball dress and the box of ultrasounds and hospital bills she spent so much time trying to hide before Finn ruined everything. She doesn't talk about anything with her mom. They act like the last year never happened. Quinn spends a lot of time in her room, running on her treadmill and rearranging her Cheerios trophies. Her mom works all day, as a secretary, and drinks all night. Quinn thinks about how every bad thing in her life is just another thing that will make her stronger in the end. She'll be so strong the sheer force of her presence will keep people away. No one is getting the best of Quinn Fabray again.
Sometimes, people text her to hang out or go to a party. She isn't ready and ignores them. They stop texting. Puck texts sometimes. She doesn't know how to talk to him. He's so hard to figure out. Sometimes, she thinks no one knows him at all. He says whatever he thinks she wants to hear and she can never believe him. It's hard to talk to him, because she won't let him mention anything that happened last year, and that's all they've ever really had in common.
The first day, she walks down the hall in her Cheerios uniform (after the whole Santana debacle), she finally feels like she's back. The crowds of kids part around her, the younger Cheerios practically fall over themselves offering to carry her books or fetch her a slurpie. She ignores Finn and Rachel looking all couple-y. She's so over that now. This is going to be her year. She can feel it.